The Love Suicide at Schofield Barracks (One Act)

THE STORY: An Army general and his wife have committed a ritual double suicide during a Halloween party in the officers’ club at Schofield Barracks, and now an official court of inquiry has been convened to investigate their shocking and apparently senseless act. Those present at the affair and others who knew the general and his wife well are called to testify and, as tension mounts, a remarkable and compassionate portrait of the dead couple emerges—and, with it, a shattering awareness of the significance of their deed. Each character, in his testimony, contributes yet another insight, another piece of the mosaic, until the suicide is finally revealed and understood as an act of expiatory self-sacrifice, and a profound statement about war and killing and the responsibility of the individual. In the final essence, the play becomes not only an intense and moving emotional experience and a powerful evocation of the troubled conscience of contemporary America but also a stirring call to all of good will to reawaken their sense of responsibility for the moral and political actions of their country.
Presented to critical and popular acclaim at the 1984 Shorts Festival of the Actors Theatre of Louisville, this new one-act version of a play previously produced on Broadway in full-length form compresses all the elements of the original into an even more taut and provocative theatrical experience, heightening the action and underscoring the powerful irony of the drama.
“THE LOVE SUICIDE AT SCHOFIELD BARRACKS is still the best play ever written about the Vietnam war, bar none.” —Village Voice.